“I don’t know that I would call him the handsomest man I ever met,” he muttered with such ill temper that I was tempted to smack him. “But the enchanting smile has a certain stark effect.”
“Jealousy ill becomes you,” I whispered as I unbuttoned his jacket.
He glared.
“Also, I don’t like it.” I slipped the fourteenth button free and pressed my hands to his shirt, beneath the jacket. “It makes it look as if you don’t trust me.”
His chest heaved. “Of course I trust you.”
“Do you?”
The tailor returned with the finished dash jacket, this one sewn out of a fine damask dyed the color of a ripe peach. I stepped back hastily.
“Had you some remark upon the floral fabric, Maestra?” the tailor asked with a hopeful bow.
“I think by all means it is entirely appropriate for a dash jacket,” I said as the old man strove to contain his unprofessional wince at my unprofessional judgment.
Vai was too preoccupied by his own struggle to notice our aside. His tone could have been chiseled from granite, it was so hard. “Go on, Catherine. I don’t need to accompany you. Will Beatrice and your brother be returning to stay with us at the mage House?”
I took his hand. “It might be best to join them for supper at their domicile.”
The bell tinkled again as the door opened. A familiar voice said, “You’ve been in here a long time, Brennan. You said to come in after you if there was trouble. Is there trouble? Cat! I can smell you’re in here! Begging your pardon, Maesters. I didn’t see you there. I’m Roderic Barr. It’s a pleasure to meet you. You’re sewing! I do admire people who can sew. They have such nimble fingers!”
“Rory!” I shrieked, dashing out from behind the screen and into Rory’s arms. I looked up into his smiling face. “You’re all right, both you and Bee?”
He kissed me soundly on each cheek in the traditional Kena’ani way. Still close, he sniffed. “Goodness, Cat, that man has put his scent all over you!”
My cheeks must have flamed red, for the sewers turned their heads to hide their chuckles. Brennan looked past me with a warning lift of his chin. I released Rory as Vai stepped out from behind the screen in his unbuttoned jacket.
“So she did rescue you!” Rory walked up to Vai and stared him down eye-to-eye. Rory was a touch taller and he had puffed himself up in that odd way he had of making himself seem bigger. “I am her brother. I look out for her.”
Vai did not budge. “Catherine is capable of looking out for herself.”
“You have sisters. You know what I mean.”
“How do you know I have sisters?”
“Cat tells me everything.” Rory made the words a challenge.
Brennan put a hand on my arm to keep me out of it. The tailor put a hand on the screen to steady it in case there was an altercation.
Vai took in Rory’s black hair and golden eyes, and the badly mended and faded dash jacket he was wearing. “Lord of All! That’s the jacket I wore the night of… it’s ruined!”
Rory’s smile was almost a wink. “It was this, or go naked. Not that I mind going naked, but it does get cold. Be assured Cat already scolded me for ruining it and scolded Bee for letting me wear it in the first place. I do like it when Cat scolds Bee, because no one else does and I can assure you that nothing is more tiresome than Bee let loose in the world with no one to scold her.” Without asking permission, he smoothed the sleeve of the jacket Vai was wearing as Vai’s eyes widened in disbelief at the familiarity. Rory practically purred. “I really like this color. You have the most beautiful clothes.”
“Roderic, why don’t you accompany the magister so you can bring him along this evening,” said Brennan in a hearty voice as he grabbed my cloak and tugged me out the door.
I resisted. “But I… what if…?”
He cut me off as the door shut. “Nothing Rory can’t handle. Better to leave the two of them to get acquainted without you there, for I perceive they are each in their own way a bit… shall we say… protective of you, Maestra Barahal.”
“Call me Cat, please,” I said, for I perceived it was time to turn the subject entirely.
“So I shall, Cat, for that is what Bee calls you, and since she talks about you a great deal, I rather feel I know you better than I ought.”
“Oh dear,” I muttered.
He indicated a ramshackle carriage waiting at the intersection, driven by a young man burly enough to be a boxer, who was accompanied by a scarred fellow armed with a stout cudgel. The driver acknowledged us with a nod. The carriage started forward the moment we settled in the seat. Grimy glass windows rattled as if likely to shake right out of the frames.
“Are you the rats who brought news of Camjiata’s victory to Pinfeather & Quill?” I asked.
“I mean no offense, but before I take you into my confidence, I must know if the magister means to support the radical cause. Bee has repeatedly assured me that in Expedition the magister declared his intention to break from Four Moons House. Yet you are guests at the local mage House.”
“If you were a cold mage traveling in winter, you would stay at a mage House, too, or else you would freeze to death!”
He chuckled. “I am not accusing the magister of anything, Cat, although I appreciate your spirited defense. I am sure he would appreciate that defense, too, if he were here, for I have a suspicion he was a little reluctant to allow you to leave with me.”
We pulled into the heavier traffic along a main thoroughfare. Enchanting as Brennan Du might be, I was not about to discuss Andevai’s character with him!
I changed the subject. Ahead rose dark clouds, the surly smoke of iron furnaces and bustling manufactories. “I am surprised to see so many trolls in Sala.”
“The trolls see forests that need to be managed and mines that have been left untapped. Laborers who owe their service as a tithe to their prince or House masters travel here for the chance to be paid a wage for their labor.”
“And you’ve come to agitate for revolution among the laborers. Never in all my childhood dreams did I imagine I would one day conspire with radicals!”
His answering grin kicked me right in the gut, for he really was quite attractive.
“Yet you’ve grown up, Maestra. You were a girl when I met you at the Griffin Inn. I would say you are a woman now.” He reached inside his coat and withdrew a printed pamphlet. “Did you write this account of the Taino kingdom? As Beatrice would say, it’s splendidly engrossing. Especially the bit about the shark.”
I accepted his compliment with a calm, sensible smile. “It is true I have had some unexpected adventures.”
I had not set foot in the easternmost district of Sala because it was known as a rough-hewn laborers’ camp where restless men congregated. As Brennan had explained, many came from principalities to the west, escaping indentured servitude in the hope of finding employment in the manufactories. A Venerday market had been set up under shelters. Braziers heaped with wood burned merrily to cast a bit of warmth on passersby. I was grateful for my cloak.
The carriage rolled along lanes where butchers and bone-boilers hung their signs. We pulled up by empty livestock pens. On one side stood trolls like berries on a bush; no troll stood alone, and most stood in clusters of three or four, while each group kept at least three arms’ length from any other. They wore garments that mimicked human fashions, but their clothing was so adorned with bits and baubles of polished metal, glass, and beads that I had to look away or get a headache.
On the other side, the fences were crowded with men shoulder to shoulder on the rails and in the pens. They had the unwashed look of men who haven’t the coin to pay for a tub of water in which to bathe. A few shawled and cloaked women moved through the outskirts of the crowd, selling food or, judging by the furtive movement in the shadow of a half-hidden alley, their own bodies.
The heat of so many people had churned the frozen dirt into a mire. Yet despite the crush, and the occasional bark of a dog, the crowd seethed in a remarkable silence. All stared at a barrel on which a petite young
